Loading of the DIMM microfluidic chip

E. coli cells are loaded in the DIMM chip in several steps: (1) the cell inlet is plugged and its pressure balance the media inlets’ pressure, (2) increasing the pressure cell inlet brings more cells to the part of the chip with growth channels, (3) when the flow is stopped (by balancing the pressure again), the cells can swim in the channels. The movie is shown in real time. NB: loading of narrower growth channels can take up to 30 minutes.

lac promoter induction in single cells

E. coli MG1655 expressing a lacZ-GFP fusion is grown in a Mother Machine microfluidic chip with environment control. Glucose and lactose are used alternatively as carbon sources (switching every 4h). The phase contrast and GFP channels have been overlaid. Frames are acquired every 3 minutes; scale bar is 5µm.

Flow control in the DIMM microfluidic chip

This is a real-time close up on the DAW junction of the DIMM chip recorded as fluorescent and non-fluorescent media are flown into the chip with abrupt transitions. The very fast transition (under 1 second) is made possible by using a pressure controller with fast modulation.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae newborn cells

This is primarily an eye candie. Cells are stained with Calcofluor White; the picture shows the maximum intensity projection of a stack acquired in epifluorescence. The absence of bud scars indicate that cells were produced as “buds” at the last division.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae newborn cells

This is primarily an eye candie. Cells are stained with Calcofluor White; the picture shows the maximum intensity projection of a stack acquired in epifluorescence. This cell displays two bud scars, indicating that it has divided twice since it was a bud itself.

Collective chemotactic motion of E. coli RP437 (with a plasmid confering constitutive GFP expression) in a microchannel without (top) or with (bottom) a temperature gradient. After inoculation in M9 medium, bacteria are centrifugated to the low temperature end after inoculation. Due to their uptake of nutrients, bacteria create a gradient that triggers a chemotactic response visible as a travelling wave. In presence of a temperature gradient reaching lethal temperatures, the chamber colonization is not affected until bacteria reach very high temperature (45.5ºC). Microchannels are 20 mm long × 500 μm high × 100 μm wide. Experiment by T. Julou (LPS, ENS) and J. Saragosti (Institut Curie).

Publications

This list might be neither exhaustive nor up-to-date: you can also find me on google scholar.

a lightweight, responsive website template based on the Skeleton boilerplate (no javascript — except for media lightbox, no jQuery dependency, no Bootstrap dependency: loading a page transfers less than 200kb!). You’re currently looking at it ;)